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Rockwood native Josh Fuhrer leads urban renewal effort

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Josh Fuhrer in Rockwood, where he grew up when it was an idyllic slice of suburbia he likens to Mayberry. Now, as the new executive director of the Gresham Redevelopment Commission, he hopes to plant the seeds for Rockwood's renewal.
(Eric Apalategui, Special to the Oregonian)

The district
has made strides, including new civic and community developments in recent
years. The most recent is the Rockwood Public Safety Facility, a police
headquarters for Gresham's escalating fight on street gangs, among other law
enforcement goals.

Still, the
area's promise outpaces its progress. Many people's perception of Rockwood has
much to do with mayhem and little to do with Mayberry.

Fuhrer, who is
himself a property developer in struggling parts of Portland, would like to
return to running the business full-time after he's finished planting the seeds
of Rockwood's renewal.

"I don't want
to be in this position for 20 years or even 10 years," Fuhrer said of his work
at the urban renewal agency. "My goal is to try to work myself out of a job as
quickly as possible."

A simpler time

On a
Thanksgiving Eve drive through the community where he returned to live in his
30s, Fuhrer described his childhood in Rockwood. He remembers it as an idyllic
time in a landscape of big streets and small houses that sprouted from the
berry fields between Gresham and Portland after World War II.

"No one was afraid to go anywhere," said
Fuhrer, who has a younger sister. "As
kids we would get on our bikes and be gone dawn to dusk. It was the kind of
Mayberry that families would want to put roots into."

View full sizeLynch View Elementary, where Josh Fuhrer went to grade school, served parts of the historic Rockwood community. It is now on the Portland side of the city limits, although the home where Fuhrer grew up is on the Gresham side following annexation in the 1980s.Eric Apalategui, Special to the Oregonian

The Fuhrers
had moved from Southern Oregon to Portland when he was a toddler so his father
could find work as a welder. By the time he was 4, in 1978, the family had
saved enough money to buy a little ranch house in a sea of rectangular homes
that still look like they were dropped from the same cookie cutter.

While his
father built rail cars and freighters in Portland, his mother was president of
the PTA at nearby Lynch View Elementary.

"I was one of
those kids right there. I spent so many summers playing basketball on these
courts," he said.

Not far away,
he stopped the city-issued Prius at the Rockwood Plaza, a shopping center at
the busy corner of Southeast 182nd Avenue and Division Street.

"This," he
said, "is an important place."

In the late
1970s, Kienow's was still the neighborhood grocery store where everyone knew
everyone. It's a Dollar Tree now. In the same center there was a Rexall Drugs,
where Robert Kennedy stopped during his 1968 presidential campaign. It's a
thrift store now. Across the street was The Red Corral, where young Josh and
friends would stop for hamburgers, hot dogs and soft-serve ice cream. It's a
Domino's now.

In those days,
there was even an annual Rockwood parade.

"Every year we
would sit out here on the sidewalk ... right here on 182nd," he said.
"It was just the coolest thing."

The intersection

The corner has
additional significance for Fuhrer: It's where he almost lost his life.

The 1992 Centennial
High School graduate studied theater in New York before moving to Portland,
where he managed property and acted in a theater company he founded with
friends.

At age 24, while
visiting his family in Rockwood one day, Fuhrer stepped off a TriMet bus at the
Rockwood Plaza corner. He walked in front of the bus and into the crosswalk when
a car traveling about 35 mph came along.

The impact
tossed Fuhrer into the air. He shattered the car's windshield. The impact left
him with a mangled leg that would require a titanium rod to fix, several broken
ribs, a concussion and a shoulder that still doesn't work right.

Fuhrer went on
to graduate school, studying commercial real estate and becoming a developer
focused on so-called transitioning neighborhoods, mostly in Portland.

What stuck
with him throughout was a memory from a couple days after the crash, when TV
news reported that a kid had been struck in the same spot he was, by a car
doing 25 mph. That kid died.

Fuhrer said
the experience planted ideas that helped him grow into the person who one day
would tackle Rockwood's problems.

"That's how I
can pay back the miracle that I'm still alive," Fuhrer said. "I feel like I
have a tremendous gift I was given."

Plans for renewal

Ground zero in
the battle for Rockwood's renewal is a wedge of property where the Rockwood
Fred Meyer once stood. It's at the epicenter of a community that is younger,
poorer and less likely to have a car than in most town centers across the
region, despite having wide streets that kids risk their lives to cross.

Back in the
1950s, the property hosted the Multnomah County Fair. Freddy's moved in during
Rockwood's boom years the property once held a separate Fred Meyer pharmacy, a
barbershop and a dive bar known as the Satellite Restaurant.

"I was in
there three times a week every week as a kid," Fuhrer said while overlooking
the site, which is sandwiched between Stark and Burnside streets next to the
Rockwood MAX station.

View full sizeThe Rockwood Office Building, which until recently housed a Gresham police substation, will be home to the first commercial redevelopment of the old Rockwood Fred Meyer site.Eric Apalategui, Special to the Oregonian

Freddy's left
a decade ago. Today, most of the property is vacant, covered in asphalt, gravel
and grass. There's a playground near the center, and a community-made replica
of the solar system in one corner.

The city
bought the land intent on developing a "catalyst site" for its urban renewal
plan, but the concept stumbled and then blew up when the Great Recession struck
in 2008.

Fuhrer's plan
is to start small, with the building that houses the Rockwood Community Office.
Renovation will focus on attracting a few retail businesses, perhaps
restaurants and shops, even a small community theater. Fuhrer's department opens
an office there in December.

After that,
Fuhrer wants to push development to a row of commercial businesses across 187th
Avenue to form a small but vibrant retail core similar to Portland's Northeast Alberta
Street or North Mississippi Avenue.

"Over the
course of the day, you've got people coming and going all the time," he said. "Criminal
activity wants to hide in the shadows."

After the
modest development proves itself, Fuhrer figures more developers will be
willing to invest in the area.

"Nobody wants
to be first," he said. "You have to demonstrate there's a market demand for
space."

View full sizeJaden Ross, whose seventh birthday was Nov. 30, perches on a replica of the solar system that community members created on the former site of the Rockwood Fred Meyer store.Eric Apalategui, Special to the Oregonian

"Sense of urgency"

Fuhrer doesn't
have time to patiently let this play out.

Although
Rockwood's urban renewal plan won't expire for 10 years, the voter-approved
measure requires the city to pay off its debt by 2023, which Fuhrer said means
new development needs to begin generating revenue within three years.

"It's going to
take creativity, and it's going to take a sense of urgency," he said.

He said he
would make more money – his city salary is about $87,000 – if he stuck to his
own business interests. But for now, his primary goal is to get Rockwood on the
rebound.

"I don't feel any pressure," Fuhrer said. "This
is work that I love to do, that I've done in other places. Now I get to do it
in the neighborhood that I care most about."